ESG Is....A FELONY
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2022-06-18 07:00 by Karl Denninger
in Corruption , 661 references Ignore this thread
ESG Is....A FELONY *
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A reasonable postulate for virtually every thing that is wrong in the US -- and much of the rest of the world -- can be stated as "selective prosecution has ruined the world, and cannot be fixed until the people enforce equal application of the law."

"ESG", which in the vernacular is "Environmental, Sustainability and Governance", all are externally-imposed costs on corporations, specifically public corporations.  Unlike laws, which are also externally-imposed costs, these costs are imposed by a cartel, and cartels under penalty of being "disinvested" or even having your leadership ejected by force.

Cartels are illegal in the United States, with few exceptions:

Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $100,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $1,000,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding 10 years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.

This law (Clayton, which is the second of two, the first being Sherman which criminalized the act while Clayton was rapidly passed to criminalize the attempt irrespective of success) dates to 1890.

It does not just impose a fine (of up to $100 million) but also 10 years in the pokey in the form of a criminal felony conviction for each person involved.

So if you and I get together, agree to impose cost by coercion on other people and in doing so our intent is to do so in a cohesive fashion such that competitors must all comply we have committed a criminal felony.

Cost is cost no matter how it works or what sort of cloaking and greenwashing you do with it.  If myself and three other large Internet providers in a given area all get together over some beers, lament that now we can't get people to work because the government has turned into a free-money fest for them and decide together to all raise prices by a dollar on our customers so we can all offer our employees a nice fat raise we have committed a serious federal offense.  When I ran MCSNet I wouldn't even contemplate having lunch or beers with one of our serious competitors in my market lest the conversation go in that sort of direction and I've now done something that could, quite-reasonably, lead to me doing 10 years in the federal slammer.

Corporations must comply with the law and to the extent that some organization or group lobbies to get laws passed, which all comply with, that's not a felony. 

But absent law such coercion is a felony.

Why?

Because without coercion one or more of the competitors in a market will tell said "ESG" people to pound sand.  That firm will have lower operating costs and as a result will tattoo those who do enact said policies.  This is called competition -- and, to be precise, productivity and it is productivity, doing more with less, that is responsible for every bit of our standard of living in the modern world.

In 1890 we, through our representative process, declared such coercion by other than law imposed evenly on all a felonious act.  There is no exemption for "investment companies" like Vanguard, Blackrock and similar to these laws.  None.  Yet here we are, and just like in 2008 when nobody committed any crimes (to directly quote Gary Johnson who was at the time running for President as a Libertarian, and was lying like a bearskin rug) we are facing record-high gas prices and inflation to a large degree precisely because we are not prosecuting acts that, under the law, are declared as crimes.

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Winston2020 461 posts, incept 2020-03-29
2022-06-18 08:40:47

And all for what is fundamentally -bullshit-...

Verification, Validation, and Confirmation of Numerical Models in the Earth Sciences
Science, New Series, Vol. 263, No. 5147. (Feb. 4, 1994), pp. 641-646

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Ve....

Excerpts:

Verification and validation of numerical models of natural systems is impossible. This is because natural systems are never closed and because model results are always non-unique. Complete confirmation is logically precluded by the fallacy of affirming the consequent and by incomplete access to natural phenomena. Models can only be evaluated in relative terms, and their predictive value is always open to question.

Numerical models are increasingly being used in the public arena, in some cases to justify highly controversial decisions. Therefore, the implication of truth is a serious matter. The terms verification and validation are now being used by scientists in ways that are contradictory and misleading. In the earth sciences-hydrology, geochemistry, meteorology, and oceanography-numerical models always represent complex open systems in which the operative processes are incompletely understood and the required empirical input data are incompletely known. Such models can never be verified.

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And here's something I linked to in a forum where a chicken little news item was screaming about 400 ppm CO2 (actually, they should always be using and MUST actually mean ppmv):

"PPM is a configuration of measurement that is associated with solid or hard concentrations. And on the other hand, PPPMV is a configuration of measurement that is associated with the gaseous concentration."

Note that this graph is in THOUSAND parts per million by volume (ppmv):

Temperature (T) and atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration proxies during the Phanerozoic Eon

https://www.researchgate.net/publication....
Attilahooper 4k posts, incept 2007-08-28
2022-06-18 09:01:04

Can I buy an inverse ESG?

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Sick Boy nCoV!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAqeA5Hc....
Tickerguy 193k posts, incept 2007-06-26
2022-06-18 09:01:34

Those are found at the gun store.

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The difference between "kill" and "murder" is that murder, as a subset of kill, is undeserved by the deceased.
Pete_brewster 172 posts, incept 2015-12-10
2022-06-18 09:21:53

"A reasonable postulate for virtually every thing that is wrong in the US -- and much of the rest of the world -- can be stated as 'selective prosecution has ruined the world, and cannot be fixed until the people enforce equal application of the law.'"

That's the basic cause of everything wrong with every civilization ever. And that's why they all eventually die.

All human law codes are a weapon to be used to ensure the tax-slaves keep coughing up treasure, on pain of death if they refuse.

The ruling class are free to use the proceeds to do whatever they damn well want to do without meaningful consequences, short of barbarians showing up at the gates to loot their palaces and carry off their daughters. By then it's too late to correct course.

It's good to be king---until you aren't king any more.
Tsherry 12k posts, incept 2008-12-09
2022-06-18 09:45:44

Quote:
Those are found at the gun store.


For now. But if the Party gets their way you won't have anything to feed it.

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Stay out of the blast radius.
Winston2020 461 posts, incept 2020-03-29
2022-06-18 09:45:51

16 June 2022
Polar bear population discovered that can survive without sea ice
The group has adapted to hunting without sea ice, which suggests some members of the species might survive as the Arctic heats up.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-0....

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Golly, that's nice, although they won't have to do so. Lots of historical data graphs:

extraordinary global heating in the Arctic
June 17, 2022

The North Pole may be having the coldest spring/summer on record, with temperatures persistently below the 1958-2002 average.

https://realclimatescience.com/2022/06/e....

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Also:

STUDY: Polar bears continued to thrive in 2021 Bear population increases to 32,000, up from about 26,000 - March 2, 2022

https://www.climatedepot.com/2022/03/02/....

Recent survey results bring the average global population estimate to at least 32,000, with a wide range of potential error. ... These additions bring the global population total to almost 32,000, up from about 26,000, albeit with a wide range of potential error.

Results from the 20172018 survey of the Davis Strait subpopulation revealed numbers are stable at about 2,015 bears (range 1,6032,588), but bears were found to have been fatter than they had been in 20052007, with good cub survival.

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50 years of predictions that the climate apocalypse is nigh
November 12, 2021

https://nypost.com/2021/11/12/50-years-o....

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Only a worldwide idiocracy, which is what one would expect from a combination of the IQ bell curve and the intentional lack of instruction in the LEARNED skill of critical thought and analysis lets them get away with this -CRAP- along with all of the other BS they get away with - like concentrating on wind and solar and not walkaway safe nuclear power plants like LFTRs and some designs that can even "burn up" the transuranic waste from our current Cro-Magnon technology reactors which extract less than 1% of the energy in their nuclear fuel.
Winston2020 461 posts, incept 2020-03-29
2022-06-18 10:02:13

"A reasonable postulate for virtually every thing that is wrong in the US -- and much of the rest of the world -- can be stated as 'selective prosecution has ruined the world, and cannot be fixed until the people enforce equal application of the law.'"

That's the basic cause of everything wrong with every civilization ever. And that's why they all eventually die.

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Yep, because that's a SYMPTOM of the problem.

The actual problem is that without a -MORAL- foundation as a guideline, the NATURAL tendencies of human's leads to the exploitation of the less intelligent and capable by a few. That's why communism, collectivism, and authoritarianism are so hilariously and obviously wrong and will never work. Where are the human "angels" we can place in such power over us?

Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species. - Edward O. Wilson, American biologist, nicknamed "The Darwin of the 21st century" in his book "The Ants"
Whitehat 12k posts, incept 2017-06-27
2022-06-18 11:07:49

@Tsherry -- "For now. But if the Party gets their way you won't have anything to feed it."

They cannot outlaw all sort of other tools even if they could effectively restrict firearms or ammunition.

The real problem is that if it gets to violence, it will be steered by powers ready and waiting for it to create an even worse hell.

Look what we got after the Civil War, in Europe after Germany was supposedly defeated the first time and after the Germans used extreme means to deal with social degeneracy and chaos, it is the old human story.

The powers that be want the people to rise up in violence as they have already planed for that outcome. The leaders who arise will more then they bargained for in the end.

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smiley Je souhaite

Quod tu es, ego fui, quod ego sum, tu eris
Cmoledor 1k posts, incept 2021-04-13
2022-06-18 11:08:08

And as you continually point out WITH evidence to support that stance, is the fact that absolutely fucking NO ONE goes to prison. Ever. Well, none of the important people anyway. Prison is for peons who cant pay the bribes.

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The whole world is one big fucking scam
Why are you giving a vulgarity warning here? Our genial host is an advocate of both skullfucking and sodomy via rusty chainsaw. Credit to Rollformer
Quantum 767 posts, incept 2021-05-18
2022-06-18 11:08:25

@Winston2020

Quote:
model results are always non-unique


This is a huge point. As an example: SOME models of infectious disease recognize this, but most don't. Most try a few parameter sets and publish ones that make the model fit reasonably well (eg, a lot of the crap with covid), then do some sensitivity analyses around the selected parameter values. In reality, more robust estimation shows that there are often thousands of combinations that could account for whatever the trend is in the outcome of interest. Bringing it back to climate, it's probably very possible to show that increasing CO2 puts us into an ice age again.

IOW, our understanding is a lot more primitive than many would like to think.

As most here know, ESG has nothing to do about environment, but everything to do with control.

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Our God, will you not judge them? For we have no power to face this great multitude that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you. --2 Chron. 20:12
Whitehat 12k posts, incept 2017-06-27
2022-06-18 11:08:48

Back to the point at hand.

I was in two professions, an executive board member and an executive officer at a major entity. In all four it was very common for us to receive training, warnings, pressure to the point of downright annoyance and self-police each other to not even accidentally cross the line into what Karl describes. It was brought up at least monthly in the last two that i listed, and there was such a fear for us making a mistake that we had a legal counsel who attended all of our meetings just to make sure that we did not cross the line and that the audio-recorded and later transcribed minutes of our meetings would not accidentally pickup something. It got to the point where people were almost afraid to say something. Other members of said boards would often themselves stop someone about to make a mistake. Since the attorney present was there to prevent this, it did the easiest thing possible which was to constantly shut people down. Anyone who has hired legal counsel knows that the easiest way for them to do their jobs is to say no to everything and stop everything. It got annoying, like being babysat.

In all of our policy discussions, strategic planning, pricing structures, whatever one could imagine, this was a common concern, and if one had to brainstorm an idea where one might slip, major efforts were taken for the right people to be present and from said committee or informal group no indication of such action to emerge. It was rather funny to note that i was personally against a situation which reeked of market allocation, cost the customers of the service much money, inconvenience, loss of opportunity and choice, however that for some reason could not be pierced by what seemed to be an understanding among our employees and just the general convention of the business.

Either way, accurate accounts existed and were referenced of historical examples in our profession's and organizational history where some mistake was made leading to Federal prosecution.

In other words, it was a constant fear.

How in creation do such blatant things which Karl describes here, and of course healthcare manage to continue when i can actually reference slips of the tongue getting people into massive hot water in significantly smaller and less influential in terms of the greater economy organizations limited to a select community and its customers.

It is called influence. Money does not purchase power, it purchases access.

The assholes getting away with this have a lot of access, you don't.

It started when our representatives achieved two things which will be very hard to undo. They no longer live with the people whom they represent. Additionally their positions evolved to careers and guilds where they have more in common in terms of lifestyle with the people with whom they work and do business than the people they represent. They go to lunch and dinner with the families of influential people, and their families benefit from cross access and common opportunities.

The way to know if you have any access is by two tests. Do you have the personal cellular telephone number of one of these people who will take your call while he is doing something else, just like you might pickup you phone for a call from your life while mowing the lawn or having fun with your family? Does someone you know have the ability to provide you with this number and its access?

Now you know why laws are enforced for some and not others.

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smiley Je souhaite

Quod tu es, ego fui, quod ego sum, tu eris

Dingleberry 677 posts, incept 2011-11-06
2022-06-18 12:13:24

ESG is simply another form of woke. Except instead of insane "progressive" cultural leftist SJW bullshittery, it's now in the company boardroom. And only in the west. This woke shit is not pulled in non-western countries like China, even though these ESG companies have assets there. Only the west gets this special treatment, seemingly meeting the demands of the SJW, the young, the soccer mom, and other fools who believe in that stupidity. Ok. So what next?

Since the medical monopoly continues to get away with financial and other forms of murder......I doubt Blackrock and guys like FINK will lose any sleep worrying about a knock on the door from our esteemed FBI-IRS-DOJ "professionals".

I take some comfort is seeing a preview of this shit already in Europe. Seems like when the cost of energy goes up by a factor of 3-4....people gradually start to lose their wokeness (except virtue signaling.....which of course is free). Next stop: power failures, empty shelves, and unemployment. Let's see if they continue to "do it for Greta" or "do it for Ukraine" when the shit REALLY hits the fan. They are already ramping up natural gas which of course is NOT (according to the woketard) good for greenhouse gases......hmmm.

We have certain gender and other demographic groups that are reliably "progressive". If voting numbers are to be believed, they are in fact now the majority. Will pain cause them to awaken from their dogmatic insanity?

One thing I know about lefties (I was born in a leftie town, raised around them, worked with them, saw them up close and personal)....they are, at their core, thieves. They view the world as run by thieves, so they will "get theirs". And any problems in life are caused by "the man", never the person in the mirror. Now thrown in the rabid SJW madness which will only decrease the overall economic pie. The crumbs they get now will look like a feast when the reality of ESG bears its ugly fruit. Go woke and go broke is looking like the 11th Commandment.

Wokeness has a price. I can tell you, the woke ain't woke when it comes to THEIR money. Perhaps a few days (or weeks) in the dark will get their attention, or paying through the nose for the basics to survive. I know using reason and logic won't help, at all. You already see this with Brandon and blaming big oil for democrap suicidal energy policies. Will the blame game work? Or is the populace not as stupid as I think they are? We will see.
Tonythetiger 821 posts, incept 2019-01-27
2022-06-18 12:24:57


Yes, the impact of ESG nonsense will be felt in an ever expanding area of the Western world as time passes. Such activity was made illegal for a good reason. Allowing such behavior increases the cost of living for the common man at the expense of the politically connected. And that increased cost is going to get progressively worse until the two-tiered system of 'Just-Us' is ended.

In the news this past week was the announcement by Russia that gas flows into Europe via the Nord Stream pipeline will be reduced by 40% going forward. Seems that some of the compressors needed to move the gas are in need of repair and delivery of the necessary parts can't be sourced because of sanctions.

https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/meet-the-ne....

Too bad, so sad. Expect German gas prices to accelerate upward from rates which have tripled in the last three months. And, as our genial host points out, expect German and European industrial competitiveness to fall behind as a result.

Meanwhile, sanctions have propelled the Russian economy to record levels due to the ever increasing prices they can demand for the products that everyone needs and can't get anywhere else. Talk about unintended consequences. Who could have expected this?

Well ... anyone with a few functioning neurons maybe. Apparently there aren't many of those among Western politicians these days. The common man will suffer as a result, and the standard of living for the majority will begin a long decline until such nonsense is ended.










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"War is when the Government tells you who the bad guy is. Revolution is when you decide that for yourself." - Benjamin Franklin
Tickerguy 193k posts, incept 2007-06-26
2022-06-18 12:25:52

Yep.

Compressors have a decent number of wear items in them and if you can't get parts, well......

So which would you like? Sanctions or gas?

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The difference between "kill" and "murder" is that murder, as a subset of kill, is undeserved by the deceased.
Latviski 192 posts, incept 2008-02-22
2022-06-18 15:33:27

Gas.
3-market-thinker 68 posts, incept 2022-02-06
2022-06-18 15:33:42

The more you produce and the cheaper you produce it the more wealthier the nation.

We are not talking quantum mechanics here.

Yet the politicians continue to tax more and allocate resources to highly inefficient avenues along with causing the population to speculate on useless Cryptocurrencies and worthless stocks.

We would probably have 100 mpg ICE vehicles on the road now if governments hadn't subsidized EVs and taxed and regulated the hell out of the vehicle market.

I think we are at the threshold now where due to handouts there is no incentive to start a business or continue operating one and to not even work.

We are seeing this with the data as companies are struggling for workers.

What a mess!!!

This is not going to end well.
Tickerguy 193k posts, incept 2007-06-26
2022-06-18 15:34:13

Oh I doubt it 3-market on the 100mpg. Run some numbers on the thermodynamics of that.

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The difference between "kill" and "murder" is that murder, as a subset of kill, is undeserved by the deceased.
Tonythetiger 821 posts, incept 2019-01-27
2022-06-18 15:39:17


The sad part is that Siemens is a German industrial giant that has apparently given up domestic manufacturing of anything non-computer related. The only tie-in to heavy industry on their website is computer control of same (internet of things stuff).

So yes, the shortcomings of just in time inventory for repair parts has combined with international sanctions and supply chain disruptions to leave Germany without 40% of their imported natural gas for the foreseeable future.

One has to wonder if they had ANY spare parts on hand such that some of the compressors were able to be put back into service, or if they bought the paradigm 100% and have no critical spare parts available locally as a standard practice.

As TG noted, it's not like they have no idea which parts are going to wear out fastest.

Penny wise, pound foolish. It seems to be the latest idea for the "best" way to run a business. All over the world.

Looks like the German population is foooooked if these issues aren't resolved before Fall comes around.





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"War is when the Government tells you who the bad guy is. Revolution is when you decide that for yourself." - Benjamin Franklin
Tonythetiger 821 posts, incept 2019-01-27
2022-06-18 15:40:48


Wait a second there TG ... don't overlook the Suggestions of Thermodynamics just yet. (/sarc)

There's always this possibility:

inline







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"War is when the Government tells you who the bad guy is. Revolution is when you decide that for yourself." - Benjamin Franklin
Tickerguy 193k posts, incept 2007-06-26
2022-06-18 15:41:08

@Tonythetiger - Fauci should stick his dick in there and see how it works.

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The difference between "kill" and "murder" is that murder, as a subset of kill, is undeserved by the deceased.
Frat 12k posts, incept 2009-07-15
2022-06-18 15:43:34

You have banged this drum for years, and I agree wholeheartedly with the premise.

The problem I see at this point is that our elected "officials" are infinitely more like to repeal Sherman-Clayton and pass something codifying their preferential treatment of specific people or businesses than they would be to uphold the laws on the books. It sucks, and should have already resulted in a 1776-style event, but there it is.

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We're fucked. There will be no happy ending here; there is no going back to 'normal.'. There are only bad outcomes and worse outcomes. And we don't get to choose those, either.
3-market-thinker 68 posts, incept 2022-02-06
2022-06-18 16:02:41

@ Tickerguy.

100 mpg is probably a stretch to be fair.

But they would be significantly better than the market can currently offer.

The unfortunate thing is due to the regulation and taxes we will never know what types of vehicles would be on the road now if they wasn't easy targets for politicians to pick on.
Tickerguy 193k posts, incept 2007-06-26
2022-06-18 16:08:12

Quote:
100 mpg is probably a stretch to be fair.

But they would be significantly better than the market can currently offer.

The unfortunate thing is due to the regulation and taxes we will never know what types of vehicles would be on the road now if they wasn't easy targets for politicians to pick on.

Not really.

Is 50mpg achievable -- or even not very hard? Yes. Hell, there's a car in my driveway that gets it right now on the highway, and mid 40s in city driving. Of course that's on diesel, which has a ~15-20% BTU advantage over gas.

My Mazda can break 40 if I keep my foot out of it on RUG. The "3", smaller and with the 2L instead of the 2.5L, can get very, very close to 40mpg at 70mph and I bet it would get 45mpg at 55mph. Both of those are aerodynamics, but there's a limit to how far you can reasonably go.

How much more can you get? Not a whole hell of a lot when it comes to an ICE -- unless you are willing to drive an INLINE 2-seater (what Elio was going to make), in which case an honest 70mpg is almost-certainly achievable. But what we have now is pretty damn good.

That's particularly true if you put a larger engine in because you want oodles of go-juice when you stomp the loud pedal. You pay for those moving parts and their losses all the time. All things equal 4 pistons have less drag than 6, and smaller-diameter pistons have less swept area, and thus the rings have less drag on the cylinder walls. And so on. The old idi Diesel Rabbit handily got 50mpg without anything fancy, but you could also pick the back end up with your HANDS if you had to and it didn't have 500lbs of extra crap in it mandated by the government, all of which you have to accelerate.

Why do trucks get 15? They're a brick, basically, from an aerodynamic point of view, and at speed its basically all air resistance.

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The difference between "kill" and "murder" is that murder, as a subset of kill, is undeserved by the deceased.

Tm22721 1k posts, incept 2008-01-09
2022-06-18 17:10:52

A guillotine is easy to build in your garage then hauled into town.

https://mail.google.com'+_.L(_.Eu(h).rep....

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The cheeze in the mouse trap is always free.
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